Justin Bieber can’t seem to avoid bad publicity. A new rumour about him getting ‘smacked’ by NBA player Blake Griffin, who plays for LA Clippers, began circulating online on Monday.

Even as reports claimed the rumours were false a tweet by LA Laker’s Chris Kaman pointed otherwise.

Several popular sports blogs reported on Monday that Griffin “smacked the sh*t” out of Bieber after the singer refused to put on a shirt inside a West Hollywood Starbucks outlet, Gossip Cop reported.

The Starbucks barista is quoted as saying (via Empire Sports):

“He came in with no shirt on and his pants hanging down and underwear showing and tried to order a caramel apple machiatto.”, said Joey Goldsmith, the Starbucks barista, “I just told him he would have to put a shirt on if he wanted to order.”

Bieber reportedly started using cuss words at the barista and threatened to have his bodyguard, “kick his a$$”.

That’s when Blake allegedly donned his cape.

Griffin, who was sitting at a table nearby, decided to intervene and settle things down but Bieber’s aggressive behaviour resulted in him getting smacked and knocked down to the floor by Griffin.

“I saw Justin stumble out of the door looking like he was crying,” added the barista.

Gossip Cop subsequently reported, after checking with a source close to Bieber, that the story was false. As per the ‘source’, the rumour was “made up”, as Justin had “not returned to Los Angeles for weeks”.

But the following tweet by LA Laker’s player Chris Kaman points towards the report being true after all, at least to an extent.

Full disclosure, Chris does a lot of joking around on his Twitter page so he isn’t exactly a credible “eye witness”, but he dropped a couple other tweets to keep the rumors circulating until we hear something from Blake directly.